#the book of pleasures

[kenzie-eli-reads-books]

An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures

Clarice Lispector

Literary Fiction

★★★★★

I finished this book almost a week ago and I’m still struggling to put into words what it meant to me. 

This book is about loving and being and how when we are being we do our best loving. It’s also about faith and how our belief and our unbelief shape us and guide the way we love. 

The most important thing to me in this is that Lori is given the space and time to learn, unlearn, and change her mind indefinitely. This story both begins and ends mid-sentence, which feels to me like permission to go on. 

I was raised in an evangelical cult without the freedom of being and un-being. I was a defined creation with a set existence and purpose. I had to think and feel the way the Creator intentioned. But in this book, it was like Lispector was showing me how we get to be our own makers. We get to become continuously. We can bend and shape and change, we can contradict and correct, and it doesn’t have to begin or stop. We can “exchange an eternity after death for eternity while [we are] alive.”

And when we accept this fluidity and imperfection of being, we get to love others as they create and uncreate themselves too. Love can be both intense life-giving while also allowing space for the other to change and be right, wrong, confused all the while. We can love one another and support each other through this. We can rely on each other while learning self-possession as well.

There’s wholeness in imperfection and un-making. Lispector describes a “state of grace” in which you are “an average person who suddenly becomes real, because [you] are average and human and recognizable.” 

Growing up the way I did created a reliance on spirituality that I’ve battled with ever since leaving the faith. I feel both more whole than I ever had and like I’ve lost something irreplaceable ever since. In this book, Lispector offered a perspective that has helped me understand how to hold peace in this way of being. She writes: 

“It’s down to us whether we manage painstakingly to be what we really are. We, like all people, have the potential to be gods. I don’t mean gods in the divine sense. First we must follow nature, not forgetting its low moments, since nature is cyclical, it’s rhythm, it’s like a beating heart. Existing is so completely out of the ordinary that if we were aware of existing for more than a few seconds, we’d go mad. The solution to this absurdity called ‘I exist,’ the solution is to love another being who, this someone else, we understand does exist.”

This is in the context of a romantic relationship, but I think it applies to Love in the fullest sense. As someone who is AroAce, my ability to love those around me is sometimes questioned or diminished, but it’s as big and becoming as any other love. I get to exist with so many wonderful people, and their existence - their beingness - is how I make sense of my living eternity outside of organized, learned religion.

This is my first Clarice Lispector book and I’m so glad that she was recommended to me. It took me a bit of time to tune into her voice, but once I did, it was like navigating by the river’s current; I didn’t have to keep checking my map to get where I was going.

I look forward to reading more Lispector. I’m going to sit and rest with this one for a while longer though. 

[tartppola]

last dance with skully

[spocksocksrock]

what

[gothamite-rambler]

Harley smirked, "I earned my psych diploma, boys."

Harley (analyzing the wayne boys): You have depression, daddy issues, mommy issues, chaos issues, insomnia, attachment issues, anger issues and a constant need to make people happy even if you struggle with it.

Dick, Jason, Damian, Tim looked at each other wondering who's she's referring to.

Harley (tight smile): All of ya, it refers to all of ya.

Dick: I don't have attachment issues!

Harley: Jason and I talk a lot, you do. Tim and I talk a lot too, you do. It's perfectly normal though.

Dick glared both his brother who averted eye contact with the man.

Cass: What about me?

Harley: Oh you're perfect.

Dick: She has all of the shit you told us we have!

Harley: She doesn't have insomnia or anger issues, and she's fixed her daddy issues thanks to Bruce.

Cass clapped happily.

Duke (pausing a show on his phone): I was good with my mom and dad, but what would you give me?

Harley: Traumatized, social anxiety, no parent issues, but guilt for not savin' them and a tad bit of depression.

Duke (happy): A tad? I'm doing good then!

Duke returned to watching his show.

Tim (bothered): That's not fair.

Harley: It's not my fault you and ya brothers deal with cripplin' depression brought on by numerous traumatic episodes which leads ya to being easily startled at times, avoiding specific situations and leaves the three oldest sexually confused due to switchin' your pain to pleasure.

Damian sighed relived at the last part while the three oldest Wayne boys blushed because she was right. Duke chuckled slowly, turning into loud laughter.

Duke: Didn't miss a beat, did she?

Dick (blushing): I'm not... that into pain.

Harley (doubtful expression on her face): Don't lie.

The brothers left annoyed that Harley was right, while the therapist pats herself on the shoulder for her therapy skills sticking.

Harley: Joker insanity or not I still got it! I'm getting accepted by better help soon enough.

Duke laughed harder causing Cass to shake her head with a smile.

pt 2

[f1rewalk-with-me]

bill design belongs to @1spooky2me :) based on the album cover for “the pleasure principle” by gary numan

[sidsinning]

When men like problematic violent video games and media it's easily "life doesn't equal fiction", but when women like toxic romance it's "poor women are being brainwashed into liking abusive relationships we shouldn't glorify", but society don't wanna acknowledge their infantilization of women when it comes to guilty pleasure hobbies geared towards a female demographic, like they don't have common sense and a brain when consuming fiction

[flowerytale]

Clarice Lispector, from An Apprenticeship or the Book of Pleasures

[hamletthedane]

Coworker: You know, you were talking about that book the other day at lunch, and I kinda wanted to read it.

Me: What book?

Coworker: The Hobbit.

Me: You’ve never read the Hobbit?!?!? Did you get it??

Coworker: I started last night and I’m already almost to the end…..I’m starting to feel strangely sad thinking about all the time I wasted being “too cool” to read for pleasure when I was younger. I wish I had known about this book when I was a teenager - it would have changed my life, I think. There’s just something about this story that I really love. It’s, like, comforting??

Me, trying not to get emotional: Yeah…the Hobbit really does that to you.

[ghostlyheart]

How I (roughly) imagine this scale:

1- I see myself as a faster reader than the average person. I can breeze through a text quickly and still understand almost all of it

2- I read at a "normal" speed. I need to pace myself but can consistently read and comprehend a text in a reasonable time frame

3- I see myself as a slower reader than other people. It takes me a long time to get through a text and if I try to go too fast I won't understand it

Obviously this can vary by your mood, the type of text, etc. and this is a very imprecise scale with some overlap, I'm just casually curious!!

[fortheloveofexy]

am I the only person waiting until I actually have my hard copies in hand before reading the short stories? I've been avoiding social media all day because I'm scared of getting spoiled...

[shisasan]

[jenna-louise-jamie]

𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘹 𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳 + 𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘱𝘵 2

[stealfocus]

ARTIST: Tomer Hanuka

[yannig]

This is such a small detail, but I love it so, so much.

Any French person not from Paris hates being called Parisian, but nobody hates it more than someone who regularly has to interact with foreigners. I kinda want to argue that the people from Marseilles are the one who hate it the most, but honestly everyone hates it. This is so on point I love it!

But also. Also. It's such a good tidbit of characterization. It's something that stayed with Jean beyond Exy, Moriyama and Raven. It's an inconsequential part of him he's refusing to give up. 'You can call me French all you want but I will not be called a Parisian.'

And yes, maybe it goes with the 'Moreau' part of him. But it's also a part of the 'before'. And he has kept it.

[oakendesk]

book cover - Pleasure Bound - 1965

Eric Stanton